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“Nkem, please, let’s deal with this together,” he said. “We will do whatever you want. Please let’s do it together.”

Olanna went to the kitchen to turn the kettle off. She came back and sat down opposite him. “You said it happened just once. Just once and she got pregnant? Just once?” She wished she had not raised he

r voice. But it was so implausible, so theatrically implausible, that he would sleep with a woman once in a drunken state and get her pregnant.

“It was just once,” he said. “Just once.”

“I see.” But she did not see at all. The urge came then, to slap his face, because the self-entitled way he stressed once made the act seem inevitable, as if the point was how many times it had happened rather than that it should not have happened at all.

“I told Mama I’ll send Amala to Dr. Okonkwo in Enugu, and she said it would be over her dead body. She said Amala will have the child and she will raise the child herself. There is a young man doing timber work in Ondo that Amala is to marry.” Odenigbo stood up. “Mama planned this from the beginning. I see now how she made sure I was dead drunk before sending Amala to me. I feel as if I’ve been dropped into something I don’t entirely understand.”

Olanna looked at him, from his halo of hair to his slender toes in leather sandals, alarmed that she could feel this burst of dislike for someone she loved. “Nobody dropped you into anything,” she said.

He made to hold her but she shrugged him off and asked him to leave. Later, in the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and savagely squeezed her belly with both hands. The pain reminded her of how useless she was; reminded her that a child nestled now in a stranger’s body instead of in hers.

Edna knocked for so long that Olanna had to get up and unlock the door.

“What’s wrong?” Edna asked.

“My grandfather used to say that other people just farted but his own fart always released shit,” Olanna said. She had wanted to sound funny, but her voice was too hoarse, too tear-lined.

“What’s wrong?”

“The girl he slept with is pregnant.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Olanna squinted; what was wrong with her?

“Get ahold of yourself!” Edna said. “You think he’s spending his day crying like you are? When that bastard left me in Montgomery, I tried to kill myself and you know what he was doing? He had gone off and was playing in a band in Louisiana!” Edna patted her hair irritably. “Look at you. You’re the kindest person I know. Look how beautiful you are. Why do you need so much outside of yourself? Why isn’t what you are enough? You’re so damned weak!”

Olanna moved back; the tumultuous crowding of pain and thoughts and anger that shot through her made the words flow out of her mouth with quiet precision. “It is not my fault that your man deserted you, Edna.”

Edna first looked surprised, then disgusted, before she turned and walked out of the flat. Olanna watched her go, sorry to have said what she said. But she would not apologize yet. She would give Edna a day or two. She felt suddenly hungry, bitingly hungry; her insides had been emptied out by her tears. She did not let her leftover jollof rice warm properly but ate it all from the pot, drank two cold bottles of beer, and still did not feel sated. She ate the biscuits in the cupboard and some oranges from the fridge, and then decided to go to Eastern Shop for some wine. She would drink. She would drink as much wine as she could.

The two women standing at the shop entrance, the Indian in the Faculty of Science and the Calabar woman who taught anthropology, smiled and said good afternoon, and she wondered if their covert glances shielded their pity, if they thought she was falling apart and weak.

She was examining wine bottles when Richard came up to her.

“I thought it was you,” he said.

“Hello, Richard.” She glanced at his basket. “I didn’t know you did your own shopping.”

“Harrison has gone to his hometown for a few days,” he said. “How are you? Are you all right?”

She disliked the pity in his eyes. “I’m very well. I can’t decide which of these two to buy.” She gestured to the wine bottles. “Why don’t I buy both and if you’ll share them with me, we can decide which is better. Can you spare an hour? Or do you have to run back to your writing?”

Richard looked taken aback by her cheer. “I would hate to impose, really.”

“Of course you wouldn’t be imposing. Besides, you’ve never visited me”—she paused—“in my flat.”

She would be her normal gracious self and they would drink wine and talk about his book and her new zinnias and Igbo-Ukwu art and the Western Region elections fiasco. And he would go back and tell Odenigbo that she was fine. She was fine.

When they got to her flat, Richard sat upright on the sofa, and she wished he would sit in that relaxed, semi-sprawling way he did in Odenigbo’s house; even the way he held his wineglass was stiff. She sat on the carpeted floor. They toasted Kenya’s independence.

“You really must write about the horrible things the British did in Kenya,” Olanna said. “Didn’t they cut off testicles?”

Richard murmured something and looked away, as if the word testicles had made him shy. Olanna smiled and watched him. “Didn’t they?”